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he/him
if you devalue trans people in any way, including nb people, please block me
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Cops won’t help you or I because we’re not the capitalist class. It’s even worse if you’re a minority. And same with most other people, unfortunately.
I live in small town South Dakota where people like to imagine they’re friendly, but they’re some of the most fucked up people you’ll ever have the displeasure to meet. I have the bad luck genetically to look like “one of the boys,” and so other men have disclosed to me their most unhinged thoughts and opinions, thinking I’ll agree. Don’t let them fool you – they’d absolutely commit murder or worse to get what they want.
I often think the best chance we’ve got is to curate a small group of people and live apart from all this. And what my husband’s been through too when he was a child, it makes me enraged. It’s like he says, humans are the most fucked up animal on the planet, and literally everything on earth would be better with us out of the picture.
While I genuinely feel bad for economically disadvantaged workers with long commutes in used vehicles, I can’t help but notice most of the complaints about fuel prices come from people who: A. Shout down anyone trying to improve public transportation infrastructure by saying it can’t work in rural areas (it can, and has), and B. Own outrageously large personal vehicles that guzzle gas and houses with 2+ stall garages.
I’ll listen to complaining from anyone who doesn’t fall into one or both of these two groups.
I became hyper aware of it the first time I tried using Tik Tok, and I was served nothing but alt-right hate videos. Obviously, search engines aren’t usually quite so obvious, but for instance, people in my location are certainly more likely to net results connected to far-right ideas and agencies, because of the interests of people who live here.
I don’t like that idea at all. Search engines should only respond to deliberate input from the user imo. I know that’s a big ask for people to acclimate to appending “in [location name]” if they expect location specific results, but the convenience of just saying “hey Google, restaurants near me” is not worth the consequences.
Unfortunately, almost all search engines are complicit, including supposedly privacy friendly ones like Kagi, Qwant, and Startpage. I’m no longer recommending those to people. SearXNG and Mojeek are the only ones that don’t lean into the algorithmic and locational fuckery, but even that’s with a lot of tweaking the settings.
It’s no great mystery why things like fascism are on the rise. And people will say I’m in the minority for caring about this, and … yeah, that’s the problem.
Rather, educating people how to use keywords and syntax is far better than teaching people to depend on an algorithm. This would net one the results that you describe without any of the problematic aspects of an algorithm.
I don’t see any need for an algorithm whatsoever, but I see many ways it can be used to frustrate or manipulate users. It is my strong opinion that a valid search engine only responds to deliberate input from the user, and things like algorithms or location-specific results are an endless source of discouragement and frustration to me.
When will people realise that google has tailored algorithms and we are not all experiencing the same search results?
You’re right. This is the real problem with search engines like Google and one reason I use SearXNG instances and Mojeek instead. Where I live, the algorithm is more likely to net content that is biased toward right-wing conspiracy theories and problematic agencies because of that algorithm. Any search engine that does this is not a valid search engine, in my opinion.
Honestly, I did pretty well (except the last one which I had no way of knowing was a legitimate web site – and what the hell kind of name is that for a legitimate site anyway? But I digress…), but I would have taken steps to verify every single one of these before taking any further action. I just inherently distrust email and SMS messages.
Does this comment seem fresher from Linux :P
I finally got Linux Mint set up and joined the forums. First I tried it as a dual boot, but my old laptop never played well with Windows anyway, so I went ahead and did a full install. It’s got a HDD so I don’t feel to concerned about using this as a test machine and overwriting multiple times.
After I use this for a while, I want to try some of your recommendations. Then once I find exactly what I want, I’ll consider what I want to do with my main rig. Some people have warned against dual booting, but it worked just fine for the short time I had it set up like that.
Anyway, I still have your comment saved for reference, so thanks!
I just activated Windows 10 on a laptop I bought from ebay, and I was reminded that Microsoft too wants people to view its official store as the default way to obtain software.
One of my goals for this weekend is to set up a dual boot for Linux Mint, which I’ve never done before. I’m fully aware of its limitations, but I’m getting so tired of all this crap.
The people who see the protest as a failure were many of the users who used the official app, default settings, and seldom if ever contributed to the site. They were never going to leave anyway.
Look how many people came here, and there is a noticeable decrease in the number of bots and trolls. I see this as a huge win for us users.
Firefox with uBlock Origin on Windows or Linux, and NewPipe on Android